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Doug Johnstone

Meet the Skelfs: well-known Edinburgh family, proprietors of a long-established funeral-home business, and private investigators… When patriarch Jim dies, it's left to his wife Dorothy, daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah to take charge of both businesses, kicking off an unexpected series of events. Dorothy discovers mysterious payments to another woman, suggesting that Jim wasn't the husband she thought he was. Hannah's best friend Mel has vanished from university, and the simple adultery case that Jenny takes on leads to something far darker than any of them could have imagined. As the women struggle to come to terms with their grief, and the demands of the business threaten to overwhelm them, secrets from the past emerge, which change everything…

Sarah Barron

Isis Publishing Ltd

Skelfs

A Dark Matter

Haunted by their past, the Skelf women are hoping for a quieter life. 

But running both a funeral directors’ and a private investigation business means trouble is never far away, and when a car crashes into the open grave at a funeral that matriarch Dorothy is conducting, she can’t help looking into the dead driver’s shadowy life. 

While Dorothy uncovers a dark truth at the heart of Edinburgh society, her daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah have their own struggles. 

Jenny’s ex-husband Craig is making plans that could shatter the Skelf women’s lives, and the increasingly obsessive Hannah has formed a friendship with an elderly professor that is fast turning deadly.

The Big Chill

Keeping on top of the family funeral directors' and private-investigation businesses is no easy task for the Skelf women, and when matriarch Dorothy discovers a human foot while walking the dog, a perplexing case presents itself … Daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah have their hands full too: The mysterious circumstances of a dying woman lead them into an unexpected family drama, Hannah's new astrophysicist colleague claims he's receiving messages from outer space, and the Skelfs' teenaged lodger has yet another devastating experience. Nothing is clear as the women are immersed ever deeper in their most challenging cases yet. When the daughter of Jenny's violent and fugitive ex-husband goes missing without trace, real danger presents itself, and all three Skelfs are in peril.

The Great Silence

The Skelf women live in the face of death every day, running a funeral directors and private investigators in Edinburgh, and their own grief intertwines with that of their clients as they reel from shocking past events. A fist-fight by an open grave leads Dorothy to investigate the possibility of a faked death, while a young woman's obsession with Hannah threatens her relationship with Indy and puts them both in mortal danger. An elderly man claims he's being abused by the ghost of his late wife, while ghosts of another kind come back to haunt Jenny from the grave...pushing her to breaking point. As the Skelfs struggle with increasingly unnerving cases and chilling danger lurks close to home, it becomes clear that grief, in all its forms, can be deadly…

Black Hearts

The Skelf women are recovering from the cataclysmic events that nearly claimed their lives. Their funeral-director and private-investigation businesses are back on track, and their cases are as perplexing as ever. Matriarch Dorothy looks into a suspicious fire at a travellers' site, and takes a grieving, homeless man under her wing. Daughter Jenny is searching for her missing sister-in-law, who disappeared in tragic circumstances, while granddaughter Hannah is asked to investigate increasingly dangerous conspiracy theorists targeting a retired female astronaut. . .putting her own life at risk. With a body lost at sea, funerals for those with no one to mourn them, reports of strange happenings in outer space, a funeral crasher with a painful secret, and a violent attack on one of the family, The Skelfs face their most personal - and perilous - cases yet. Doing things their way may cost them everything. . .

The Opposite of Lonely

The Skelf women are back on an even keel after everything they've been through. But when a funeral they're conducting is attacked by a drone, Jenny fears they're in the middle of an Edinburgh gangland vendetta. At the same time, Yana, a Ukrainian member of the refugee choir that plays with Dorothy's band, has gone missing. Searching for her leads Dorothy into strange and ominous territory. And Brodie, the newest member of the extended Skelf family, comes to Hannah with a case: Something or someone has been disturbing the grave of his stillborn son. Everything is changing for the Skelfs. . . Dorothy's boyfriend Thomas is suffering PTSD after previous violent trauma, Jenny and Archie are becoming close, and Hannah's case leads her to consider the curious concept of panpsychism, which brings new danger. . . while ghosts from the family's past return to threaten their very lives.

Skelfs - The book series

Skelfs - The book series

Skelfs books in order

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